The Provisional Irish Republican Army, officially known as the Irish Republican Army and informally known as the Provos, was an Irish republican paramilitary force that sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, facilitate Irish reunification and bring about an independent republic encompassing all of Ireland. It was the most active republican paramilitary group during the Troubles. It argued that the all-island Irish Republic continued to exist, and it saw itself as that state's army, the sole legitimate successor to the original IRA from the Irish War of Independence. It was designated a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and an unlawful organisation in the Republic of Ireland, both of whose authority it rejected.
Sinn Féin is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The Irish Republic was an unrecognised revolutionary state that declared its independence from the United Kingdom in January 1919. The Republic claimed jurisdiction over the whole island of Ireland, but by 1920 its functional control was limited to only 21 of Ireland's 32 counties, and British state forces maintained a presence across much of the north-east, as well as Cork, Dublin and other major towns. The republic was strongest in rural areas, and through its military forces was able to influence the population in urban areas that it did not directly control.
The Social Democratic and Labour Party is a social-democratic and Irish nationalist political party in Northern Ireland. The SDLP currently has seven members in the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLAs) and two members of Parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It was created as a separate legal entity on 3 May 1921, under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The new autonomous Northern Ireland was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster: four counties with unionist majorities – Antrim, Armagh, Down, and Londonderry – and two counties with slight Irish nationalist majorities – Fermanagh and Tyrone – in the 1918 General Election. The remaining three Ulster counties with larger nationalist majorities were not included. In large part unionists, at least in the north-east, supported its creation while nationalists were opposed.
Nationalist terrorism is a form of terrorism motivated by a nationalist agenda. Nationalist terrorists seek to form self-determination in some form, which may take the form of gaining greater autonomy, establishing a completely independent sovereign state (separatism), or joining another existing sovereign state with which the nationalists identify (irredentism). Nationalist terrorists often oppose what they consider to be occupying, imperial, or otherwise illegitimate powers.
The Irish component of the 1918 United Kingdom general election took place on 14 December 1918. It was the final United Kingdom general election to be held throughout Ireland, as the next election would happen following Irish independence. It is a key moment in modern Irish history, seeing the overwhelming defeat of the moderate nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), which had dominated the Irish political landscape since the 1880s, and a landslide victory for the radical Sinn Féin party. Sinn Féin had never previously stood in a general election, but had won six seats in by-elections in 1917–1918. The party had vowed in its manifesto to establish an independent Irish Republic. In Ulster, however, the Unionist Party was the most successful party.
The Workers' Party is an Irish republican, Marxist–Leninist communist party active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly election took place on Thursday, 25 June 1998. This was the first election to the new devolved Northern Ireland Assembly. Six members from each of Northern Ireland's eighteen Westminster Parliamentary constituencies were elected by single transferable vote, giving a total of 108 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs).
The UK Unionist Party (UKUP) was a small unionist political party in Northern Ireland from 1995 to 2008 that opposed the Good Friday Agreement. It was nominally formed by Robert McCartney, formerly of the Ulster Unionist Party, to contest the 1995 North Down by-election and then further constituted to contest the 1996 elections for the Northern Ireland Forum. McCartney had previously contested the 1987 general election as an independent using the label Real Unionist.
Republican Sinn Féin or RSF is an Irish republican political party in Ireland. RSF claims to be heirs of the Sinn Féin party founded in 1905; the party took its present form in 1986 following a split in Sinn Féin. RSF members take seats when elected to local government in the Republic of Ireland, but do not recognise the validity of the Partition of Ireland. It subsequently does not recognise the legitimacy of the parliaments of Northern Ireland (Stormont) or the Republic of Ireland, so the party does not register itself with them.
The Northern Ireland peace process includes the events leading up to the 1994 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire, the end of most of the violence of the Troubles, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and subsequent political developments.
Armalite and ballot box was a political catchphrase used to define the strategy pursued by Irish republicans from 1981 up until the 1994 IRA ceasefire in which Sinn Féin ceased its policies of election boycott and abstentionism and instead contested elections in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, while the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) pursued an armed campaign to end Northern Ireland's status as part of the United Kingdom.
The 1921 Irish elections took place in Ireland on 24 May 1921 to elect members of the House of Commons of Northern Ireland and the House of Commons of Southern Ireland. These legislatures had been established by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which granted Home Rule to a partitioned Ireland within the United Kingdom.
Sinn Féin is the name of an Irish political party founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith. It became a focus for various forms of Irish nationalism, especially Irish republicanism. After the Easter Rising in 1916, it grew in membership, with a reorganisation at its Ard Fheis in 1917. Its split in 1922 in response to the Anglo-Irish Treaty which led to the Irish Civil War and saw the origins of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the two parties which have since dominated Irish politics. Another split in the remaining Sinn Féin organisation in the early years of the Troubles in 1970 led to the Sinn Féin of today, which is a republican, left-wing nationalist and secular party.
Thomas James Mitchell was an Irish republican. He was active in the Irish Republican Army and took part in a raid on Omagh barracks in 1954, being captured and imprisoned. While in jail he was twice elected as a Member of the United Kingdom Parliament, but was disqualified and his elections overturned.
Owen Gerard Carron is an Irish republican activist who was Member of Parliament (MP) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone from 1981 to 1983.
The Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. In common with all other Northern Irish unionist parties, the TUV's political programme has as its sine qua non the preservation of Northern Ireland's place within the United Kingdom. A founding precept of the party is that "nothing which is morally wrong can be politically right".
Elections for local government were held in Northern Ireland in 1989, with candidates contesting 565 seats.
From October 1988 to September 1994 the British government banned broadcasts of the voices of representatives from Sinn Féin and several Irish republican and loyalist groups on television and radio in the United Kingdom (UK). The restrictions, announced by the Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, on 19 October 1988, covered eleven organisations based in Northern Ireland. The ban followed a heightened period of violence in the course of the Troubles, and reflected the UK government's belief in a need to prevent Sinn Féin from using the media for political advantage.
